What makes a good PR strategy?

What makes a good PR strategy?

The best PR campaigns just work.
They have a clear mission, a relatable message and an audible voice. They effectively
engage the target audience. They excite, anger, or even inspire. Yet, while
these campaigns can look as effortless as breathing, if you pull back the
curtain, you’ll see a lot more planning than first meets the eye.

Whether you’re the Bellora
Hotel in Sweden charging variable room rates dependant on how long guests
spend on social media, a huge
fast food chain selling gravy-scented candles or a well-known bank
putting corporate customers at the heart of its storytelling, there is one
common denominator to all successful communications campaigns – a strategy.

Why do you need a strategy? Not
having one is akin to driving a car without GPS. Sure, you might have a rough
idea of where you want to go, and you may get there, in the end. You may have memorised
the route because you’ve travelled it so many times before. But how do you know
you’ve picked the best place to go? How do you know you’ve picked the most
effective route? Is your car built to muscle its way through dirt tracks in the
forest, rather than smooth tarmac?

A strategy in PR is effectively a
framework – a plan of action and a foundation for campaign success. It will
help you to work out how to cut through the noise of the media to influence
your target stakeholders. It can also help you disarm competitors, who may be
earning more share of voice than your organisation.

Rather than diving headfirst into
tactics and hoping they will stick, you firstly need to build a robust,
measurable strategy. To do so, you need to know the answer to five key
questions:

What’s the big goal?

What are you trying to achieve from your communications
campaign? What are your core objectives? Are you looking to be bought by a
bigger fish? Are you launching a new, never-seen-before service? Do you want to
change behaviour amongst your target audience? Whatever your hairy goal is, it
should be the backbone and guiding force of everything you do within your wider
communications campaign. All roads lead to the big goal.

Who are you trying to reach?

What’s your typical user base? Is it made up of individual
consumers, IT professionals? Perhaps it’s a community with shared interests, or
someone/something else? More likely, you’ll have several key audiences you want
to reach, so you’ll need to drill down into their personas – who are they? What
do they love, like, dislike? What are their behavioural nudges? What motivates them?
Where do they get information from? The more you know about your target
audiences, the more effectively you can speak to them in a relatable and
empathic way.

Why
you?

You have a goal to work towards, and you know who you’re
trying to reach. But what are you going to say to those stakeholders you’re
looking to influence? What are your core messages and why are you really
different? Start with an overarching corporate narrative for your organisation
that conveys your tone of voice, personality and vision. Then filter this
narrative into key messages – whether written or spoken – that will resonate
with each target audience you want to speak to. There will likely be some
common themes. Beware the language you use; make sure it’s relevant to the specific
target audience you’re speaking to – there’s no point using geek speak with
grandmothers!

What are your tactics?

So, you have your eyes on the objective, you know who you
want to target with your campaign, and you know what you want to say. Now, how
do you want to say it? Tactics comprise the activities you choose to spread
your news/key messages – will you float a heavily-branded item down the Thames?
Or will you create a piece of intelligence informing your target audience with
solutions to their pain points? Have a look at the media you want to target in
the first instance, as that will likely guide and inform the tactics to choose.

What’s your measure of
success?

How will you know if your PR campaign has been a resounding
success or an absolute disaster? All PR strategies should be underpinned by a measurement
framework that clearly outlines the outputs, expected outcomes and when
everything should be delivered. The SMARTER you can be, (specific, measurable,
achievable, realistic and timely), the better. Once you’ve measured and
ultimately reviewed your success, you can take those key learnings into the
strategy you devise for your next big idea.

And there you have a recipe for
strategy! Campaign strategy is a key component of all the communications programmes
we design for our clients. Without effective messaging and a well-thought out
strategy, it doesn’t matter how much energy you expend or money you throw at
PR. This is why, at Babel, we put our best brains to the task of working out
what you need to say and how you need to say it, before you press go. Get in
touch if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your
organisation!

was last modified: April 29th, 2019 by Sarah Alonze

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About Author

Sarah Alonze

Tennis ace Sarah has seven years of technology PR experience working with major B2B brands, and is tenacious and energetic with both her sporting and professional endeavours. Sarah takes a creative outlook on campaigns, an attitude no doubt shaped by her love of literature; Dante’s The Divine Comedy is among her favourite works.